INTERVIEWER: Did you have chores to do? You had responsibilities on the farm?
JOHN: Yes indeed.
INTERVIEWER: You know I think this is something important for children to hear these things today, many of them have no responsibilities.
JOHN: They don’t, they don't have, their family does their chores. But we had chores to do. We had to get the wood out. We had to keep the yard raked and we had to. My father chopped the wood in the summer. He got the wood ready in the summertime, and he would do it in the woods. We would go down there and cut the trees down, saw em up and he’d burst the wood up and then in the wintertime all we would do is take the mules in the cart and go down there and bring the wood up and dump it up in the yard. But our chores was to see that we made all the fires. We had to get up and make all the fires in the morning. We had to get the light wood. We had to go in the woods and get what they call laddered knots. You know pine tree, the limbs after the tree decays it puts out a knot and that’s pine. And we used to have to go into the woods and gather them up and then we would take em home and put em on the chopping block split em up and make kindling out of em. In the morning we could take and light a match (Inaudible speech) and start your fire.
INTERVIEWER: Now where did you start school? Where did you go to school?
JOHN: Well I didn’t go to school much. I went to school only to Newark but you see we had work to do on the farm and my father was like most of those old timers, was a little bit funny about school. They thought it was (inaudible speech) for kids to being to school sitting doing nothing when they had work for them to be doing.
INTERVIEWER: Well he had a point then. (Laughter.)
JOHN: So all this time that all the horses had to be taken care of the cows and the horses was all the manure had to be cleaned out. Spread out on the farm and then re-filled up with clean pine shats. We used to rake pine shats in the woods for days and days and haul it and dump it up. That was done every year. That’s where the manure came from it wasn’t much fertilizer, very little fertilizer. (Audio not clear) is we didn’t raise many potatoes we tried it. I think about one year, and if you use stable manure for white potatoes you get pocky potatoes. You have a pock on them. You have to use fertilizer.
INTERVIEWER: Okay so they bought fertilizer for potatoes?
JOHN: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay when you did go to school was there a black or colored school in Newark or did you go?
JOHN: There was an all-colored school. There was a colored school and a white school but we only went to a colored school.
INTERVIEWER: Where was the colored school?
JOHN: You go right straight after you get to Newark you turn left you go right across (inaudible speech) the store we was talking about you go right across the railroad right down by Masons cannery.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, alright I’m following you.
JOHN: On that street down there the school house was right down there on the left.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. It’s still there, isn’t it?
JOHN: Yes. The old building is still there I think.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. It is, I remember last year seeing that. (Audio not clear)
NTERVIEWER: Well now let me ask you. Going to the store and everything, the black people went as well as the white people to the store? You know, on Saturday nights and everything.
JOHN: Oh yes. Yes, mostly the farmers, not the women. The women wouldn’t go, not even the colored women wouldn’t go. It would be, you take like Mr. Hark Townsend and he had a brother. I forget his name. Mr. Hark Townsend and there was another man. They just liked to hear the boys sing and the boys used to go out there. And there was a place up in Ironshire that they made home brew and they’d get a car load of em. Two or three car loads of em and they’d go up there and they’d buy em this brew. I think for about 15 cents a bottle. The man made it himself and then they’d get to singing and then they had a big joyful time. Big joyful time.
(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)
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